Mormonism and the Corruption of the Bible

The Bible’s Preservation and the Mormon Claim of Corruption

Mormonism and the corruption of the Bible. Frequently, when I talk to Mormons, they claim that the Bible has been corrupted or that we cannot trust its accuracy over the hundreds and hundreds of years that it has been copied.

The 8th article of Faith in Mormonism states the following, We believe the Bible to be the Word of God as far as it is translated correctly. Also, Mormons frequently claim that many quote, plain and precious truths have been removed from the Bible.

What these plain and precious truths exactly are, we're not told. So in response to this bold Mormon claim, we need to take into consideration a couple facts. First of all, there is substantial historical evidence which demonstrates the reliability of both the Old and New Testament texts.

Dead Sea Scrolls and the Preservation of the Old Testament

The Dead Sea Scrolls demonstrate that for over 1000 years the Old Testament was preserved with a remarkable degree of precision. We in fact have over 10 ,000 Old Testament manuscripts. For example, to take a look at the Dead Sea Scrolls, they compared a complete version roughly of Isaiah from 1000 AD to the Dead Sea Scrolls which date from around the time of Jesus to 100 AD.

And they found that comparing those two complete books, there was only approximately like 13 variations in the text. And there was only one change that really had any major importance and it didn't even affect any doctrine at all.

So, in over 1000 years of copying, the Hebrews preserved their text with a remarkable degree of precision. Now regarding the New Testament, the degree of precision is remarkable also. We have over 25 ,000 New Testament manuscripts.

The earliest New Testament manuscripts come from within 30 years after the last book was written. So, again, even if we lost all of our New Testament manuscripts that we have, the over 25 ,000 that we have, we still would not be left without a testimony.

Church Fathers, Textual Criticism, and the Reliability of the New Testament

What we would do then is we would go to the writings of the Church Fathers. The early Church Fathers cite the New Testament over 36 ,000 times in the first few centuries after the writing of the New Testament.

So some of them cite it very quickly within say early 2nd century and then others are quite a few hundred years later. But they cite the New Testament extensively. So what we would do is we would reconstruct the entire New Testament minus about 11 verses from their writings alone.

And most of those verses come from like 2nd John or other epistles that weren't used very frequently. It must still be admitted that there are errors in the transmission or copying of the Bible from over 2 ,000 years.

But these errors in the copying do not affect any major doctrine such as there being only one true God in all existence, salvation by faith alone in Jesus, Jesus as God in the flesh or Jesus was eternally God.

Most of these errors are just minor spelling variations, punctuation, or obvious slips of the pen that are known and can be corrected by comparing the large number of manuscripts available. So what you do is you find a variation in a text, you look at the other manuscripts that don't have the error and you compare them.

And that's how you can come to a reliable reading and find what the closest reading to the original text would have been. So in fact there's really a whole discipline of textual criticism that seeks to obtain the most accurate reading of various biblical texts.

It's not a haphazard process where we're not even sure exactly what the original text is. We actually have a very, very close understanding of what the original text was probably to the accuracy of about 98 .5%.

Bible Translation and Why the “Plain and Precious Truths” Claim Fails

Another thing to take into consideration is the translation process. So how do scholars translate the Bible? Many Mormons have the idea that the Bible was translated from Greek, then to Latin, then to English, or another language.

They assume that we have to translate the Bible 3 or 4 times before we get our English version. This is just blatantly inaccurate. We can translate the Bible directly from Hebrew to English which is most of the Old Testament was written in Hebrew.

Or we can translate it from Aramaic to English. Some of the Old Testament was written in Aramaic. Or we can even translate it from Greek directly to English. All the New Testament was written in Greek.

There is no need to translate it a couple of times through a couple of languages in order to get the English translation. Also, another thing to take into consideration is the meaning of plain and precious truths which these Mormons claim were removed from the New Testament.

What are these plain and precious truths? It is easy to make the claim that the Bible was intentionally corrupted and major doctrines were removed. However, for the Mormon, what evidence is there that any plain and precious truths were removed?

Where in any of the ancient manuscript copies of the New Testament or Old Testament do we find any of these following notions? First, the idea that Jesus was the spirit brother of Satan. Or second, that God the Father was once a man who attained Godhood.

Or three, that God the Father was once possibly unholy and a sinner. Or fourth, God the Father had a father before him. Or fifth, humans are pre-existent intelligences who can become gods of their own planet just like God the Father.

Or sixth, God the Father is just the God of this world and there are other true gods for other people elsewhere out there to worship. And seventh, where is there evidence in manuscript copies for an ordained Aaronic or Melchizedek priesthood authority?

Again, we don't find these teachings in any of our New Testament manuscripts, any of the 25 ,000 that we have. Now some Mormons may claim, well, there must have been a conspiracy by the church to corrupt it so extensively that they somehow corrupted all these 25 ,000 manuscripts.

Well, you have to understand that during the early copying of the New Testament there wasn't a Catholic church that existed at that time who had control over the vast reaches of the Roman Empire. In fact, sometimes the copying of the New Testament was a bit chaotic at times.

They preserved the text accurately but one text would be copying in one location and another text would be copying in another location. So there wasn't this, hey, let's get a version of the Bible that we want to agree with our doctrines.

In fact, that just wasn't the way it happened. There's numerous texts from diverse locations in diverse languages and they agree substantially and remarkably. There is virtually no textual evidence in any manuscript that supports the notion of any of these major doctrines of the Mormon Church actually being removed.

So for the Mormon to claim that these plain and precious truths, whatever they may be, were removed from the Bible in the older New Testaments, he actually bears the burden of proof.